David Margolese
| David Margolese | |
|---|---|
Margolese on the Red Sea in 2012.
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| Born |
October 24, 1957 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Residence | Jerusalem, Israel |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Alma mater |
University of British Columbia (dropped out) |
| Occupation | Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Sirius XM Radio Co-founder, Rogers Wireless |
| Years active | 1978–2003 |
| Spouse(s) | Faranak Margolese (m. 2000) |
| Children | 3 |
| Website | davidmargolese |
David Margolese (born October 24, 1957) is an entrepreneur and a founder of Sirius XM Radio, serving as chairman and CEO from 1993 to 2002. Considered “one of the earliest advocates of pay radio,” he “effectively created the industry.”
Margolese was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. He attended the University of British Columbia, dropping out after one year. His father, Leonard, also dropped out of college, to sell television sets in the early 1950s, ultimately building a successful television store.
In 1978, at the age of 20, Margolese founded Canadian Telecom, a Vancouver-based radio paging company. He struggled in his early years as an entrepreneur. In 1980, he changed his company’s focus to what would become the future cellular market. He prognosticated in his 1980 position paper, years before the commercial introduction of cellular and at a time when computers were in use by less than one percent of the public, that cellular "has the potential to become all pervasive." He also envisioned that it would "be used for much more" than just phone calls. When cell phones became widely available, it paid big dividends for Margolese. His company joined with Rogers Communications to form Cantel (a contraction of the name Canadian Telecom). Cantel would ultimately become Rogers Wireless, as of 2012 the largest cellular company in Canada, with over 9.3 million subscribers and revenues over $7 billion. Margolese cashed out of the company in 1989 to found his next venture.
Following a brief, unsuccessful stint in Israel struggling to land a license for his new cellular consortium Teletec, Margolese moved to New York City in 1990 and purchased control of a newly formed venture named CD Radio Inc. He served as chairman and CEO of the satellite radio company. Margolese believed that, like cable TV, satellite radio would find an audience willing to pay for variety.
The primary obstacle faced by CD Radio and then Sirius was resistance from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who were under pressure from the National Association of Broadcasters, who felt threatened by the competition. In 1997, the FCC granted both CD Radio and XM Satellite Radio licenses to use a part of the S-band spectrum, costing CD Radio $83 million.
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Wikipedia